The Prius is often the butt of automotive jokes for its oddball styling, pokey acceleration, and tree-hugging persona, but it appears that Toyota is having the last laugh -- at least in California. When the sales numbers were tallied up for 2012, the Prius reigned supreme as the best-selling vehicle in California with 60,688 units sold. In fact, over one-quarter of all Prii sold in the United States for 2012 were purchased in California.

Economical cars from Toyota and Honda made up the top five sold cars in California with the Civic, Camry, Accord, and Corolla taking second, third, fourth, and fifth place respectively. The Ford F-Series, which is the best-selling vehicle for the entire United States, only managed to place seventh on the sales list in California.

Toyota's Prius is rated at 51/48/50 (city/highway/combined), which makes it a perfect fit for California's congested highways.

“Environmental consciousness and changing trends are large contributors,” said Peter Welch, Chief Executive of the California New Car Dealers Association. “Eight years ago everyone was driving sport utilities and trucks, now it’s almost trendy to drive a fuel-efficient hybrid or plug-in.”

Toyota's Prius may be sitting high on its throne right now, but there are plenty of challengers to its hybrid dominance. Volkswagen is looking to win over some consumers who aren't sold on its TDI diesel engines with the Jetta Hybrid, and Ford has two competent hybrids -- the Fusion Hybrid and the C-MAX -- in its stable that promise 47 mpg combined (although real world results suggest otherwise).

All three of the aforementioned models achieve lofty fuel economy numbers with conventional styling that is more appealing to the masses.

Why do you even need one? It's California, where most drivers spend much of their driving time being stuck in traffic gridlock. The Prius doesn't run its gas engine when all you're doing is crawl along the 101 at an earth-shattering five miles an hour.

Stop trying to win the prestigious "America's Most Inbred Idiot" and use your head for a change.

Hate to be "that guy", but as forward thinking as Californians like to picture themselves, I'm thinking that without the significant subsidies and tax breaks and special lanes and free snow cones etc etc etc they receive for driving hybrid vehicles there might not be as many on the road. Just maybe?

Also California is an entire state. It's not the State of Los Angeles you know? "Most drivers" in California don't have gridlock traffic.

The population in the greater Los Angeles area is about 18 million, which is larger than most states and about half the population of California. The Bay area has most of the rest of the people in the state.

I think the subsidies and free snow cones have less of an effect than the perceived status and group think associated with hybrids. Another effect is gas in California is always more expensive than most of the rest of the country. Coupled with the extended commutes people probably really are saving money driving hybrids.

"If you look at the last five years, if you look at what major innovations have occurred in computing technology, every single one of them came from AMD. Not a single innovation came from Intel." -- AMD CEO Hector Ruiz in 2007